From the editor.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Editorial

Two years have passed since the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. came to light, and six months or so since the scandal at HealthSouth Corp. was in the headlines almost daily. There hasn't been a comparable blowup lately, but everywhere, in both public and private companies, this has been a difficult period marked by unprecedented scrutiny of corporate governance and ethics.

One reaction to all the negative news, understandably, has been for ethical finance officers to assert the strength of their own convictions. It was reaction to the HealthSouth imbroglio, for instance--in which more than a dozen former or current finance executives have been linked to a reporting scandal--that prompted Financial Executive's editors to consider developing a story about good actors: people who stood up for ethical conduct in the face or fraud or chicanery, perhaps at peril for their own jobs. In a series of mass emails, we asked FEI members to consider sharing stories about their own travels on the ethical high road.

The resulting cover story wasn't an easy exercise. Some readers offered to give us their stories, then bowed out; other anecdotes required considerable clarification or elimination of details the authors felt could root them out. Confidentiality was raised at every turn. At a time when ethics has become a paramount business issue, I think this is among the most compelling and meaningful stories the magazine has published in recent years, and I hope you agree.

Elsewhere in this issue, Donald Nicolaisen, the SEC's chief accountant since August, sat down with Ramona Dzinkowski to review a series of topics, among them the state of financial reporting, harmonization of international reporting standards, compliance and the general state of U.S. capital markets.

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